THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
houses as was ancient Delphi, with its
"treasuries."
In the Pretoria region, and
also near Rustenburg and in the "Bush
veld Complex," there are apparently un
limited iron resources, while the last
named region promises to yield one of the
greatest platinum deposits in the world.
The Transvaal's annual production values
in coal, silver, platinum, and the base
metals total something like $15,000,000.
And then there are the ever-cropping-up
diamonds--one might almost say, those
irrepressible South African diamonds.
Really, one never knows where they will
turn up next.
BLASTING FOR DIAMONDS
Here is the Transvaal's famous Premier
Mine, an even larger crater than its de
funct forerunner at Kimberley. In about
a quarter of a century the Premier has
produced some 62 tons of diamonds, in
cluding the famous Cullinan, the largest
diamond ever discovered. Its longest di
mension was 42 inches, its shortest was
2 inches, and it was cut into nine large
stones and scores of smaller ones.
Blasting hour at the Premier, as beheld
from the crater's edge, is a striking sight.
At the given moment a red flag flutters,
a bell clangs, and antlike multitudes of
workmen are seen scurrying for shelter.
There ensues a veritable barrage of some
2,000 dynamite charges, hurling successive
masses of blue earth in air; then the ex
plosions die down, the workers reappear
to load the debris on trucks that ascend to
the crushing plant, and the day's big dia
mond "offensive" is over (see page 502).
And, just to illustrate how South Afri
can diamonds keep cropping up, here is a
glimpse of the Lichtenburg alluvial dig
gings west of Johannesburg. Not five
years ago Lichtenburg was a tiny, willow
shaded Sleepy Hollow of a dorp-sleepy,
perhaps dreaming, but certainly not of
diamonds. But suddenly one day appeared
some 25,000 men, who lined up for the
official pistol shot, then rushed pell-mell
to peg their claims on what had proved to
be a diamond field fifteen miles long by
five miles wide.
To-day the diggings contain 40,000 peo
ple and might be described as a dust-coated
conglomeration of tin shacks, makeshift
schools and shops, police spies, and scores
of the usual diamond-buying outfit-that
is, a tin hut, a flag with owner's name, a
roll of bank notes, a pair of scales, a mag
nifying glass, and a concealed revolver.
And here some will make good and some
will fail, and all will keep on "washing
dirt" and hoping, until South Africa's next
trek-inspiring rumor; for rumor, to the
diamond prospector, is as the breath of life.
BOUND FOR KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
Africa, land of novelties, to paraphrase
Pliny, still yields its striking contrasts.
Our 7,000 miles of travel through the
Union's centers of civic and economic
achievement had given us but one side of
the picture. Yet it is hardly more than an
overnight train journey from the Rand's
industrial plexus to that region of the east
ern Transvaal's low veld where, from the
lion and leopard downward, hundreds of
thousands of beasts roam, and jungle law
prevails throughout an area of more than
8,ooo square miles. Such, in brief, is the
Kruger National Park.
One's approach from interior plateau to
seaward low veld lies through wild moun
tain and river scenes that prepare one for
the spectacle of the game reserve, as a
stage setting preludes the action. It was
near the Swaziland border that our car
veered from the vast, blue Makonjwa
Range and descended toward Barberton.
The plain seemed to undulate with the
woolly backs of sheep on their seasonal
trek from high to low veld, from winter
withered grasses to where, as the land
scape's smoke spirals revealed, old herbage
was being burned off to make way for the
new.
At length, across a vast amphitheater
formed by the jagged profiles of an en
circling mountain wall 20 miles long, there
appeared Barberton, a scattering of dolls'
houses in an immensity. What we beheld
was the northern spurs of the Drakens
berg and the oddly named De Kaap Valley.
Placing a kaap (cape) among mountains
is a topographical feat rivaling Shake
speare's "seacoast of Bohemia."
It was
when a band of weary Voortrekkers from
Cape Colony first gazed at those moun
tain spurs across sealike mists and beheld
therein a resemblance to the sea-and
mountain prospect of their homeland's
shores, that the touching cry went up,
"The Cape, our Cape!" And De Kaap
it has been ever since.
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